~ Richard A. Davis blogging

Monthly Archives: June 2007

Here is a brief list of resources for those exploring Christianity and anarchism. This is by not means a complete list – just an old list I stumbled across on my hard drive. Send me more items if you know of any.

MP Sue Bradford is promoting a bill that would lower the voting age from 18 to 16. I’m fairly neutral on the bill but think that many of the objections to lowering the voting don’t stand up in my opinion. Let’s look at some:

Kids don’t know enough about the electoral process. This is reinforced by media interviewing 16 year olds about what “MMP” stands for. It suits their stories if youth have no idea. However, it should be noted that political ignorance is widespread and teens’ ignorance on such points places them in the mainstream of political knowledge. The Electoral Commission around election time commonly have communications about how to vote – surely a waste of money if all voters already know what to do with their two ticks. Furthermore, youth don’t need to know this stuff until they get the vote, so it is more than a little disingenuous to use their current ignorance to deny them the vote.

Teens don’t know enough about life. Who does? Knowing the meaning of life is not a prerequisite for citizenship. Everyone’s view of the world is particular, whether based on age, gender, income, ethnicity. People are encouraged to vote for their interests (tax cuts, anyone?) and surely teens understand theirs, don’t they?

Teens are influenced too much by their parents to cast an independent vote. Has anyone ever found a parent of teens who has complained that their kids did everything they said? Or, are they more likely to find them rebelling? I know of adults who slavishly vote for the same party whatever their politicians do. Or, they may vote for a party because they parents always did. I don’t think teens will be any different.

Ignorance, lack of wisdom and lack of independence can affect anyone and I don’t think they form good reasons to deny teens the vote. But there are some good reasons what Bradford’s bill should be supported:

No taxation without representation. Teens pay PAYE and GST. Should they not have a say in how that money is spent?

It is more democratic. Shouldn’t teens have a say in the decisions that affect them? They are users of the health and education system and should have a say on important issues, such as the environment

The arguments against 16 year olds having the vote reveal undemocratic sentiments. Such as “Why have ignorant, uneducated people vote?” or “This is too important to be left to such people.” Such people clearly that people like them are suitable for civil rights and others are not.

My arguments could be used for any age but I would suggest that the age of 16 is signfcant foe several reasons:

16 – earliest age to leave school

16 – living with a partner

16 – age of consent for sex

16 – getting a tattoo

16 – getting married or having a civil union (with parent’s permission)

17 – getting a full driving license

I would link the voting age with the school leaving age or the age at which people can be married.

Anarchism is an average introduction to the ideology of anarchism. It main strength is also its main weakness – the weaving together of contemporary thinkers with the fathers of Anarchism. I was thankful for some leads for my thesis – especially those promoting some reflections on doctrine of humanity and the view of human nature that underpins various political ideologies. Anarchism still has much to teach us about us the underlying assumptions of liberalism and capitalism.

The Godless Constitution is a polemical work targeting those who claim America as a Christian Country. Using historical evidence they try to demolish the argument that America was founded as a Christian nation. On the face of it they seem pretty convincing, but the authors do not address directly those who would claim otherwise. While this is not the scope of the book, not doing so leaves some doubt about the other sides of the argument. Nevertheless it is worth reading, and made me wonder if such explicit statements exist about the secular founding of New Zealand. Historians in this part seem more focused on the evidence of a bi-cultural country, than a religious or secular one.

This anthology tackles four key issues in race, neighborhoods, and social capital: how is social capital discussed within the contexts of racial inequality, how does this dialogue inform public policy regarding neighborhood revitalization and economic development, and how is utilization of social capital an effective strategy for improving inner city living conditions. These accomplished authors first address the common argument and then provide illustrative analyses, articulating political and economic strategies that ensure basic economic benefits for all communities, regardless of the “stock” of social capital.

Does Plunket allow student male nurses to do placements with them, or do they ban them, and only accept female ones?

If they have such a policy, as I’ve heard on the grapevine, then they should live up to their values, and do their best for all New Zealand’s children and get rid of it. All male (and female) children have a right to grow up in a country that treats all people with equal respect.

I absolutely agree with the commentary on the sixth commandment given by the Scottish Confession of 1560, quoted by Karl Barth: God orders us to ‘protect the life of the innocents, resist tyranny, help the oppressed,’ and forbids us to ‘tolerate the shedding of innocent blood when we could stop it.’ Probably the authors of the text saw it as an implicit justification of defensive wars, but I gladly accept it in its explicit formulation, even seeing it as a formal condemnation of war: for how can a Christian claim to be protecting the lives of the innocent if he begins destroying the lives of the other innocent people? How can he claim to be resisting tyranny if he begins exercising a tyranny as brutal and odious as the other? How can he help the oppressed if he becomes an oppressor himself, helping the oppressors on his side? How can he stop the shedding of innocent blood if he contributes to the shedding of innocent blood? Common sense agrees with God’s law in crying out: do not use high-sounding hypocritical euphemisms to gloss over a mutual slaughter which is nothing but a collective criminal madness. Murder does not protect anything, it destroys.

Body Politics by John Howard Yoder is a brief, yet powerful study of five practices (he’d like to call them all sacraments) that the church has which have political import: baptism, Eucharist, dispute resolution, decision-making and the multiplicity of gifts. It’s good stuff and it’s easy to see why Stanley Hauerwas holds Yoder in such high regard. Both Yoder and Hauerwas see the church forming people through its own practices and this having an impact on the watching world. Yoder sees these sacraments as political and not just individual acts, affecting the community, not just the individual believer. A highly recommended book.

The other book was Sharing Gods Planet: A Christian Vision for a Sustainable Future from the Church of England. Sadly I can’t rate this very highly. It is not very good either on theology or the practical responses to what we can do about the environment. To do both in a short publication is difficult, but as Yoder has shown in Body Politics, with skill sometimes less is more.

Prof Storrar understands “public theology to be a collaborative exercise in theological reflection on public issues which is prompted by disruptive social experiences that call for our thoughtful and faithful response”. He also thinks that 2007 is a kairos moment for public theology. These are his reasons why:

In closing I want to suggest five reasons why our meeting in Princeton and our launching of this new journal seem so timely and truly represent an opportune moment for global collaboration from my perspective at the Center of Theological Inquiry. First, we all recognize that only the ecumenical fullness and global breadth of the Christian tradition, in dialogue with the other great religious traditions, can enable a faithful theological engagement with contemporary public issues. Secondly, we all recognize that those public issues increasingly have both a local and a global dimension to them and therefore require to be studied from both perspectives in collaborative research projects around the world. Thirdly, we all recognize that such local-global public issues are being debated by an emerging global civil society and public sphere. As public theologians we are all committed to participating in that global public sphere as well as critiquing the economic, social, political and environmental disruptions of globalization. Fourthly, we all recognize that this requires us to be dialogical and pastoral as well as analytical and prophetic in doing public theology. The model of the single prophetic voice that characterized public theology in the twentieth century is giving way to a more collaborative approach to our theological task and public witness, involving faith communities and the marginalized as well as scholars and experts. Fifthly, we all welcome the commitment of our academic institutions around the world to international research collaboration in all disciplines and look to the Global Network and this journal to help make public theology a leading discipline in this global academic enterprise.
[W. Storrar, ‘2007: A Kairos Moment for Public Theology’, International Journal of Public Theology, 1 (2007) 5-25.]

No doubt his predecessor at Edinburgh, Duncan Forrester thought that there was a kairos movement for public theology when he established CTPI in 1984, during the reign of Thatcher. Since then, as Storrar notes, things have changed:

With the election of a Labour government in Britain in 1997, there was a real sense of moving into a post-Thatcher era. Blair and his ‘New Labour’ party and government presented themselves as practising a progressive ‘Third Way’ politics and non-ideological approach to national and global governance after the fall of Communism, leaving behind the old party divisions of left and right as outdated and irrelevant to the times. This was all rather different from the crusading neo-liberal rhetoric and heightened old War atmosphere in which CTPI had been born and initially pursued its work in the mid-1980s.

This lead to a different method of engagement for CTPI in the post-Thatcher political environment:

This all made for a more direct and closer relationship to government for CTPI after 1999; one that was very different from the distant and prophetic relationship with the Thatcher and Major governments that CTPI was known for in the 1980s and 1990s.

In some ways it is easier for a church agency to be in opposition to the government. It means it can be, in the words of Storrar, “prophetic”. I wonder if CASI and other church agencies are struggling under a Labour government to find a place of opposition and prophetic utterance.

There is still a place for prophetic utterance whenever there is a government, since they inevitably want people’s hope to be put in them and their policies (such as unlimited economic growth) in favour of God. We may have to look harder behind their policies and also set aside our own ideological commitments (depending on our political orientation). For Christians in America, that may be the Republican Party, for others in the UK and NZ, that may be the Labour Party).

I would also say, in conversation with Storrar’s point four above, that the single prophetic utterance is a biblical model that remains, to this day, in tension with corporate speech, whether from a church, public theology conference or government. Collaboration and agreed positions are not always where God is to be found. Occasionally God will use individuals (such as a Jonah, Exeziel or Jeremiah) to call us back to faithfulness. A public theologian needs to be able to assess the validity of individual prophets and be open to a range of methodologies. But perhaps I misunderstand “public theology.” Is it merely concerned with issues that the public is interested in, or does it describe a public methodology, having the public involved in the theology itself. The latter approach is what Prof Forrester used to do, involving, for example, the poor in discussion about poverty. Hopefully some answers will become clear at the conference.